Venus

What Venus is in you

Venus is how you love and how you want to be loved. It is what you find attractive, how you show affection, what you think is beautiful and what you are prepared to spend your money on. It also covers pleasure in the plain sense: food, comfort, music, a good afternoon with nothing to do.

Your Sun sign tells me who you are. Your Venus tells me how you go about loving someone, which is often a different story. I have sat with plenty of people whose Sun was fire and whose Venus was earth, and they could never work out why they wanted a quiet night at home when everything else in them wanted to be out the door.

Venus also carries your values in the wider sense. What you are willing to pay for, in money and in time, is Venus talking.

The cycle and the retrograde

Venus takes about 225 days to go round the Sun. From where we stand it never wanders far from the Sun, about 47 degrees at most, so your Venus is always in your Sun sign or within two signs either side of it. You see it as the morning star or the evening star and never in the middle of the night.

About every eighteen months Venus appears to stop and walk backwards through the zodiac for about forty days. That is a retrograde. The planet only looks as if it is reversing. Earth and Venus move at different speeds, and as the two pass each other Venus looks from here as if it is sliding back, the way a slower car seems to drift backwards when you overtake it. A Venus retrograde in the sky tends to bring old loves, old wants and old questions about your own worth back for a second look. I wrote about one in the posts "Venus is walking backwards" and "Venus turns around this afternoon". If you were born with Venus retrograde, which is fewer than one person in ten, your loving runs on the inside. You feel it fully and show it late.

Venus changes sign every few weeks, so most people can be sure of theirs from the date alone. If you were born on or near the day it changed, the time matters, and a chart built on a guessed time is a different chart. The Transits and Retrogrades page covers how I use a retrograde in a reading.

The signs Venus rules

Venus rules Taurus and Libra. In Taurus it is Venus with its feet on the ground: touch, food, the garden, what lasts. In Libra it is Venus in company: partnership, fairness, beauty in how things are arranged.

The old books say Venus is at home in those two signs and uncomfortable in the signs opposite them, Aries and Scorpio, which they call its detriment. They say it is in its fall in Virgo and exalted, at its highest, in Pisces. I take these as weather notes rather than verdicts. A Venus in Aries loves perfectly well. It just loves like Aries.

Venus through the signs

In Aries, Venus loves first and thinks later. When you are drawn to someone you walk straight up to them. Coyness bores you. The spark, the chase and the first weeks are your natural country, and the long middle of a relationship is where the work is. The lesson is finding novelty inside commitment. The gift is that nobody you love has to guess, because Venus in Aries does not do love quietly.

In Taurus, Venus is at home and in no hurry. You fall slowly and you stay. Love is touch, a good meal, a warm house and the same person beside you for decades. You want reliability and are suspicious of drama. The shadow is holding on after the thing has finished, because change itself is the unpleasant part. The gift is love that lasts, and a home people want to come back to.

In Gemini, Venus falls in love with a mind. Conversation is your courtship, and a quick wit holds you where a pretty face will not. You need variety, which means new places and new ideas rather than new people. You show love in words: messages, questions, remembering what someone said. The shadow is talking about feeling instead of having it. The gift is a partner who is still interesting after thirty years.

In Cancer, Venus loves with its whole heart and a long memory. You fall into someone and they become part of your inner life, which makes the endings hard. Food is love, home is love, remembering is love. The shadow is clinging, and the grievance kept quietly for ten years. Say what you are feeling rather than leaving everyone to guess. The gift is a home people return to all their lives.

In Leo, Venus loves out loud. When you fall, everyone can tell. You celebrate: birthdays, anniversaries, a Tuesday for no reason. You want it back at full volume, and a quiet lover can leave you feeling unfed. The shadow is pride that gets in the way of an apology. The lesson is learning to hear love in a language other than your own. The gift is warmth that makes ordinary days feel like occasions.

In Virgo, Venus loves by being useful. The cup of tea when they get home, the thing fixed before they asked. You fall slowly, and once you have decided you are steady for life. The shadow is noticing what your partner could do better and saying so at the wrong moment. Doing can also stand in for sitting with them. The gift is care so thorough that the shared life quietly works.

In Libra, Venus is at home and wants company. You are built for partnership and feel most yourself as half of a we. You adjust, you compromise, you make the room pleasant. The shadow is swallowing small frustrations until they come out all at once, and losing track of what you want. The lesson is to raise the hard thing early and kindly. The gift is a partnership that feels fair.

In Scorpio, Venus loves all the way down. You do not do casual. Once your heart is in, you want full commitment and a physical connection that carries the emotional one. The shadow is possessiveness, jealousy and a memory for every slight. The old books call this a detriment. I call it Venus with the lights down and the heat up. The gift is being truly known by someone who is not going anywhere.

In Sagittarius, Venus wants love to be an expedition. Travel together, learn together, argue over a long dinner. You say what you think and want a partner who can take it. A relationship that settles into routine feels like a door closing. The shadow is bolting when commitment deepens. The lesson is adventure inside the relationship rather than instead of it. The gift is a life that feels bigger for being shared.

In Capricorn, Venus loves seriously and for keeps. Early on you are reserved and a partner may have to work to reach you, but what they find is loyalty built for decades. You show love by turning up and handling the practical. You are drawn to competence and self respect. The shadow is feelings kept inside, and a quiet belief that love is hard and rare. The gift is the quiet romance of reliability.

In Aquarius, Venus loves as a friend first. Your best partnerships begin as friendships and stay that way. You want to stay yourself inside a relationship, so you give space and do not text every hour. You are drawn to original, independent minds. The shadow is distance that leaves a partner unmet, and principles mattering more than the person in front of you. The gift is a relationship between two whole people.

In Pisces, Venus is exalted, which means working at its highest and its softest. You can love someone through what would finish most loves. You bring poetry, music, candles and a sense that love is bigger than both of you. The shadow is losing yourself, and seeing someone as you dream them rather than as they are. Boundaries are what let this love keep going. The gift is tenderness most people only read about.

Across the traditions

In the tarot, Venus belongs to The Empress, card 3 of the Major Arcana, who sits in her garden with everything around her growing. Venus rules Taurus and Libra, and the Taurus and Libra pages take each of those signs further. The Vedic Astrology section, when it opens, will give the sidereal view of Venus, where the sign positions differ from the ones used here. The links beside this page take you to all of them.

Think of the last person you loved. Did you love them the way your Sun sign would, or the way your Venus would?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.

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Netzach, Victory